Space-people relationships : glimpses from Sichuan and Sicily – K. Le Mentec au CFFD Forum (MUC, Beijing)

The relationships humans have with their spaces have been studied in multiple dimensions and from various disciplinary angles. The words, vernacular notions and scientific concepts to designate these spaces and relationships are numerous and these examinations have shed more detailed light on our understanding of the dynamics at work between humans and spaces. My proposal builds upon these achievements while using a new perspective to look at this topic : a gaze from the specific and differential relationships that people have with their spaces. This approach is not intended to be revolutionary. The idea is to test a different perspective in order to stimulate a heuristic analysis and help better understand some kinds of the contexts and challenges humans are faced with, in our contemporary world. This paper offers a brief introduction to this new perspective, which I call the anthropotopy approach. It is divided in four parts. First, I will discuss the choice of the research scope, which includes any kind of affected space. Then I’ll switch to the core of the approach taking into account the different ways in which a single space can be considered by people. This leads us to the concept of anthropotopy. In a third step I will address the implications of looking at space-human relationships through this perspective. I will conclude with a selection of research avenues for this approach, based on data I gathered in Ba-Shu (Sichuan/Chongqing) in the past and new data I am currently collecting in Sicily